


We'll Be Fireproof

by mc_writer



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Anxiety, Boys In Love, Falling In Love, Growing Up, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 11:33:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16554983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mc_writer/pseuds/mc_writer
Summary: Zayn and Liam have history. Some of it great. Some of it painful.Zayn sometimes wonders what it would be like to be able to go back and change things.He knows he's changed over the years.But some things never do.This story is part of The Ziam Club's Song Lyrics Challenge, for the prompt "Youth" by Troye Sivan. To read more of the amazing fics by the other writers participating  on this challenge,click here".





	We'll Be Fireproof

**Author's Note:**

> To be honest, this almost didn't get done. Thanks to the friends who made sure it did. Writing is hard; it takes a village to get a fic completed. Nothing but gratitude for mine.

There were moments when Zayn wondered what it might be like to stop time. He wondered what it would be like to be able to slow it down, or go backwards and do things over.

He couldn't of course. No one could.

He wondered though, if it could happen, if it would even make a difference.

It never did in the movies. In the movies, no matter how hard the characters tried, nothing they did changed the future, at least never in the way they really wanted. In fact, in the movies, sometimes they only succeeded in making things worse.

But, it didn't stop Zayn from thinking about it.

Time was strange. There were times you wished it would just stop. Other times, you wanted to make it pass as quickly as possible. But the wishing never made it so, and it just flowed on and on, impossible to stop, impossible to control.

If he could though, Zayn thought, maybe he would have slowed down that golden time, when it was all just beginning: when it was all about goofing off in the back of buses, performing in front of fans, and also, a little bit about falling in love.

Who was he kidding?

It was mostly about falling in love.

Maybe he didn't really know it at the time. But looking back on it now, Zayn was probably falling in love from the very beginning.

People remembered the big things. Sometimes. Maybe. But, they didn't really pay attention to the small, stupid moments that passed while you were waiting for life to happen to you.

Sometimes, though, those small moments were the real thing. But Zayn didn't know that then, and he let them slip through his fingers, like water.

_2010: The Beginning_

The auditions were the scariest thing Zayn had ever done. In interviews, his story was always that he never even really wanted to do it, and that his mum had to drag him out of bed to make it to the venue on time.

Except, the thing was, he really did want it.

He wanted it so much it, he could taste it. He wanted it so much it scared him to death.

He wanted to get past the auditions, and make it to judges' houses, and be chosen, and perform on stage, and win the whole damn thing.

And then he met Liam and didn't know what he wanted more.

In 2010, Zayn didn't know what it meant to want someone. But meeting Liam was wonderful, and scary in the very best way, and the one thing Zayn knew for sure was that he didn't want to go home and never see Liam again.

At the time, there were no indications that 16-year old Liam would grow into the man who would one day share Zayn's bed, his life. In 2010, Liam was warm, lean and hard like only a teenage boy could be, with broad shoulders and floppy hair, and the softest eyes Zayn had ever seen.

He was perfect.

After Simon announced that they would not be sent home and that the five of them would be put together as a group, Zayn couldn't help himself. He turned into Liam and pressed his face against the birthmark on his neck and Liam put his arm around him and held him so close, Zayn could feel the blood humming under his skin.

"We're in, mate, we're in," Liam's whisper was hot against his ear and Zayn was so happy he thought he might die.

Things were simpler then.

When the band started selling out shows in stadiums and arenas, even when things got complicated, Zayn couldn't deny that Liam could still make him feel that way. Long after X-Factor, Liam would stand in front of him, still broad-shouldered, still impossibly warm and soft-eyed, and Zayn would press his lips against that birthmark, and feel himself tumble backwards in time, to that very moment, when they were first put together.

More than the day One Direction started, it was the day Zayn caught a glimpse of a possible future.

It was the day he thought about what a life with Liam might be like. Maybe it was the day he even let himself hope for it.

But life doesn't always happen the way we plan it, hope is fleeting, and time changes everything.

If Zayn could go back, maybe he would choose that moment.

But, even knowing what he knew now, what would he do differently?

***

Zayn wandered into his home studio, his mind buzzing with a hundred and one ideas he couldn’t pin down. When he got like this, sometimes the songs came easily, and he’d write and record something that he could actually use.

Other times, the ideas would just go around in circles and lead him on a wild goose chase that led nowhere in particular.

Those were the times he dreaded. 

As he waited for his computer and recording equipment to start up, his mobile phone buzzed.

“‘Hey you.”

The sound of the voice over the line put a smile on his face.

“What are you up to?”

Zayn rubbed a hand over his head, wishing he had more to say than the boring truth of the matter.

“Not much. Just trying to get work done.”

“Did I bother you?”

“Never.”

Sometimes, he just needed someone to listen. Someone on the other end of the line who understood him. Someone to be his witness.

Because Zayn couldn’t always get his mind to work with him. That was no secret. He got so nervous sometimes, he’d shut down entirely.

Not exactly convenient when one was supposed to be a pop star. 

He always thought he might grow out of it somehow. And yet, here he was. Older. More experienced, and yet sometimes still clueless about how his mind worked.

Sometimes, he still felt seventeen years old.

_2014: The Middle_

"Zayn, mate, are you okay?" 

Zayn shook his head, his throat too dry to form words.

"Me neither... I'm..." Niall cupped a palm to his mouth, turned on his heel, and rushed to the loo.

Niall was lucky. He would break out in cold sweats and come close to hyperventilating. Then he'd get sick to his stomach and come out of the loo, slightly green around the gills, but smiling and ready to go. Harry didn't seem to be affected by anything at all.   He'd get off the bus and walk out onstage, like he was going to the shops to buy milk. Louis only got more obnoxious as show time got closer, and Liam...

All of Liam's passionate energy got drawn inside of him somehow. Not everyone saw that side of Liam, the quiet, focused side that drove him to stay hunched over his computer for hours, headphones on, scrawling lyrics on odds and ends of whatever paper he could get his hands on.

Zayn caught a glimpse of this Liam early on during their days at X-Factor. The Liam Louis couldn't stand because he was so, so, so uptight about everything.

"Let's just have fun, Liam! We probably won't win anyway! Let's just enjoy ourselves!"

And Liam would get a dark look in his eyes that Zayn wanted desperately to kiss away, though he would never admit it at the time.

Liam didn't get anxious. And even though he didn't really understand Zayn' anxiety, he never made Zayn feel bad about it. He'd crouch down in front of Liam, brush his thumb against his cheek, and smile, the way only Liam could.

"Zayn?"

Zayn looked at him and shook his head, "I don't think...I can..."

Liam's frowned. "You won't be alone out there, you know? You've got all of us. Me. Right there with you." A smile broke over his face. "Not that you need us, not really. You could sing circles around all of us and you know it. You could even go solo if you really wanted to." 

"I couldn't. Not by myself. You know me."

"I know."

And he did. Liam knew all of him.

Liam knew when Zayn needed space. He knew when Zayn needed a warm hand on the small of his back during a loud press conference, and how to hold him down when the voices in his head got so loud he couldn’t hear himself think.

Zayn knew Liam too. He knew that Liam closed his eyes when they kissed, and that he sometimes had bad dreams that drove him to tears. He knew Liam liked to talk but he also knew that Liam sometimes just needed someone who would let him be quiet.

It seemed strange to know so much about someone. To be so sure.

Because nothing about their lives was certain.

But, Zayn was sure of Liam.

The concert would be okay. Their performance would be okay.

Zayn was okay.

Everything would be fine.

And for a while, it was.

***

The Miami sun was warm on Zayn’s face. It was a perfect morning. The kind that brought to mind long lazy days, cold drinks, and warm kisses.

It was the kind of day that reminded Zayn of those early days in One Direction, when everything seemed wide open and full of possibility, before the stress and anxiety got the best of him.

Zayn didn’t—couldn’t—regret the decisions he’d made, even though they had hurt at the time. In the end, they had been the right decisions to make.

They’d led him here. To this place. At this time.

He glanced at his watch.

Time was strange. Sometimes it moved slowly, every second passing, like waves wearing down stone. Other times, it seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. You could want to speed it up, or slow it down. But wanting never made it so.

And time flowed on, out of your control, like water slipping through your fingers.

But Zayn learned that it wasn’t about controlling how time passed.

It was more about staying in the moment.

_2014: The End_

"Liam?"

Zayn's voice over the line sounded small and tinny, even to his own ears.

There was so little time to say goodbye. Zayn hardly knew what was going on, only that there were decisions made, and he was leaving the band.

Part of him was relieved. One Direction was a big part of his life. But he didn't love it all the time.

Zayn loved singing. He loved performing.   But if he were perfectly honest, there was a lot about the life he didn't like much at all. The nerves. The voices in the back of his head that he couldn't silence, no matter how hard he tried. The lead feeling in the pit of his stomach when things didn't go exactly right.

Leaving the band meant leaving everything though. And in the rush of the meetings, and discussions, and with the pressure of having to give an answer, that fact had gotten away from Zayn somehow.

And before he knew it, he was en route to the airport that would put him on an airplane that would take him away, and he hadn’t even had time to say goodbye.

Not a proper one anyway.

“Babe?” Zayn heard the desperation in his own voice over the line and hoped Liam could hear it too.

Zayn fiddled with the ring on his finger as he waited for a response, hoping that the silence on the other end of the line was just the result of a bad connection and not the sign of a more serious break.

It was the night of their first concert without him. Zayn had watched the shaky videos taken by fans.   Liam singing You and I was more raw than Zayn had ever seen him, and he didn’t miss the fact that Liam was wearing his ring too.

Four years.

And Zayn couldn’t pull it together enough to say goodbye.

“Are you coming back?”

 Zayn shut his eyes at the sound of Liam’s voice.

“I mean...are you gone for good? Will you be back?”

Zayn could say yes. Except it would be another wrong in a string of wrongs that would be impossible to make right. Because Zayn didn’t know for sure if he would be back, but if he were honest with himself? He didn’t know if he really wanted that.

Even if it meant being with Liam.

So he gave the easiest answer he could. Which wasn’t an answer at all. 

“I’m sorry…” his voice trailed off.

Sorry for what? That he had pulled Liam into his bedroom after being given his flight details and pressed his mouth against every inch of his skin? That he had pressed into Liam’s hips hard enough to leave marks, but had crept out at dawn without saying goodbye?  
  


He wasn’t sure if anyone could forgive that. Not even Liam.

Zayn should have known better. But he was twenty-three, and in love, but also burned out as hell. And he knew he couldn’t look Liam in the eyes and tell him goodbye. If he had to do that, he’d never leave.

Sometimes you did things because you loved someone.  
  
Sometimes you had to do the thing that would hurt them most to save yourself. Maybe even to save each other.

Because what does anyone really know at twenty-three?

***

The Miami house felt big. But Zayn was comfortable here. He didn’t really have a problem with space anyway; it gave him a sense of freedom and that was important to him.

Zayn had put the coffee on to brew when he got up, and the aroma filled the space, making it feel warm and comfortable.  He poured himself a cup and let his mind wander back over the years.

Time would have its way. It would pass, the way it did, slowly or quickly. You couldn’t change time.

But time would change you. 

Today, Zayn was still sometimes that twenty-three year old with anxiety. He still sometimes made rash decisions that hurt people he loved, but he was working on that. He was better now, but he remembered that time and who he was then. Maybe he always would.

Many times, though, he found himself still feeling like that seventeen-year old auditioning for X-Factor.

He heard a key in the lock and the front door open and a smile bloomed on his face.

Still seventeen, still falling in love.

“Babe?”

Liam’s voice still had the same effect on him after all these years. Time never changed that.

“I’m home.”

“About time.”

 


End file.
